I thought I understood this stuff.

So, today I spent my birthday money on an honest-to-god DTS system, a used Onkyo TX-SR502 (instead of the shitty ass RCA RT2870 I had been looking at). So, psyched that I had made a good purchase, I looked up the product manual, and holy shit. I've gone through 4 different surround sound systems in 5 years (a quadraphonic hand-me-down, a Dolby Surround bought off the back of a truck, another quadrophonic but from the 1980s instead, and the current $50 Pro Logic II system), and have set up fairly complex ones for other people, and none of them were anywhere near as complicated as this one. And this one is a mid-range model!

Products today take the approach that "more complicated is better" which shouldn't be the case.

It actually arrived already, which is fairly surprising since it was sent out Thursday afternoon. Me and Red Beard are going to set it up tomorrow morning.

Said By Aron Schatz

Products today take the approach that "more complicated is better" which shouldn't be the case.

It depends on who you are, and what you want. For you, an EVGA FTW motherboard might be awesome, but for my mother, it's an expensive confusion inducer. For me, an Arduino development board, and miniature text-only LCD, a webcam, and my computer, form an excellent security system for my room. For others, they probably just want something that they can "plug in and forget about".

For audiophiles, I doubt that the Onkyo would be satisfactory; for Tornado, it's just too much to handle. (For me, $500 is enough for my entire computer's "ideal" sound system; for audiophiles, $500 only buys one speaker.)

I apparently got a crazy deal on this thing. About half of what it typically goes for. Me and Red Beard spent 5 or so hours hooking everything up, and it is easily the best audio system I've ever had. Considering we had to cut a couple of corners, still sounds fantastic. For example, the powered sub, which amazingly acts exactly as a normal powered sub would, is actually the same cheapo Pro-Logic II audio system from before run through an RCA splitter from the Sub-Pre Out.

Holy crap you can see the desk!

And with that out of the way, I think I'm going to move onto video. I'm thinking 24-25 inch 1080P.

Dude, the wood blocks with duck tape to raise your desk....classic!!!

That was actually a couple of configurations ago. I've jury-rigged a couple of much more stable desk surfaces since then.